LWV DelCo Environmental Clearinghouse
Delaware County Environmental Clearinghouse
The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission will amend the Fiscal year 2025 Transportation Improvement Program for the region to include a $2 million plan to add electric vehicle charging stations to 18 Delaware County parks, libraries and county offices. The public can comment on the plan until noon on the day before the DVRPC’s next meeting, Oct. 23.
HB 441, a bill to protect more than 100 species of native insects, including many pollinators, passed the Pennsylvania House by a party-line vote of 102-101. It now goes to the Republican-controlled Senate. Write or email your state senators and ask them to support it.
A bill introduced in Philadelphia City Council Sept. 18 would prohibit the city from contracting with companies that incinerate its trash and recyclables. Currently about one-third of Philadelphia’s waste is sent to the Reworld (formerly Covanta) incinerator in Chester. Most of Delaware County’s municipal waste is also burned in the incinerator.
The Delaware County Council has accepted the county Sustainability Commission’s zero waste plan that promises to work towards an 82% reduction in solid waste, increase the efficiency of the county’s waste disposal practices and reduce costs.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is involved in a process to allow electric grid operator PJM to charge its ratepayers across 13 states an estimated $70 million a year to keep the Eddystone oil-and-gas power plant operating. The DOE ordered the plant, on the brink of retirement, to keep running for two three-month periods this summer and fall and it is unclear whether the order will be made permanent. The Trump Administration plans to order Forty coal plants across the country to keep operating as well.
Join PennFuture and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania in an environment lobby day Sept. 29 at the capitol in Harrisburg. With the federal government clawing back,funding and cancelling clean energy programs, we have to depend on state government more than ever. Anyone can join. Fill out the registration form at bottom.
Clean energy is getting its own day of action, Sept. 21, with more than 150 events planned around the country. Philadelphia will have its own event from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Regiuster below. See you there!
The Trump administration on Friday ordered that all construction stop on Revolution Wind, a $4 billion wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that is already nearly 70 percent complete and would produce enough electricity for more than 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut by next spring. The two states have vowed to fight the shutdown.
The Chester Lead-Free Task Force is gearing up to offer lead testing at about 20 daycare centers throughout the city this fall. Working in conjunction with the Delaware County Health Department, the Task Force is focused on testing preschoolers generally children age 3 and younger) who were not born when the Delaware County Health Department conducted an extensive testing campaign in 2021 and 2022.
The U.S. Department of Energy is seeking public comment on its 151-page draft report finding that increased concentrations of CO2 emissions will contribute to the “greening of the planet” and make the oceans more acidic, but it is uncertain what negative affects, such as extreme weather and destruction of coral reefs, will have in coming decades. Read the Federal register announcement, the report and the critical comments of several climate scientists below.
